The Weir Group PLC, Alan Harrison, Global Lean Champion,
Weir’s mission is a “journey” of excellence and Alan’s advice to the audience is to “Think Happy”, which then translates into Customer Experience, ultimately leading to Customer Delight ... therefore always put yourself in the “mind of the customer”. Adopt a customer mindset.
Weir aim to deliver customer delight by combining NPS, specific commercial investments and lean improvement programs across their business working on the following key areas:
- Process improvements are optimized when:
- Weir understand what customers think about Weir,
- Systems are integrated and include Lotus Notes and Satmetrix;
- 6 monthly review cycles focusing on quality and timing of responses;
- Closed loop process that is operated with urgency, across the organization, driven by county MD’s and has 100% close rate.
- People within Weir make the difference by:
- Adopting a problem solving mindset – how to fix, contain and prevent problems from occurring again,
- Driven by a core HQ team supported by NPS champions within each country,
- Correct mix of tools applied with 80% dedicated to soft tools (People & Mindsets) and 20% hard tools (process fixes),
- Focus on training people in the “Why NPS?” and they will figure out what?, where? & how? Themselves.
Weir’s are still on the journey and they have already learnt a number of important lessons, including:
- Once you ask customers for feedback you must do something about it – they get back to every customer,
- Quality of incoming responses is critical to validity of analysis and improvements,
- Must be top manager led and championed.
